cognitive dissidenthttp://www.cognitivedissident.org/
think differently.enCopyright 2010Sat, 04 Dec 2010 10:08:52 -0500http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=4.33-enhttp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rssother Bible-based parksIn addition to the Ark Park, there are plenty of opportunities to expand Biblically-literal entertainment into the neighboring area. Here are some other possible attractions:

Red Sea Water Park: just like the secular variety, except that an inexplicable dry area divides all the waters whenever Charlton Heston makes a guest appearance.

Biblical Justice Arena: rebellious kids, non-virginal brides, gays and lesbians, and worshippers of other religions can be stoned to death for their offenses.

Flat-Earth Planetarium: features a scale model of a four-cornered Earth, a demonstration of our geocentric solar system, and a depiction of how the stars are fixed in the firmament over our heads.

Satan's Stegosaurus Show: an archaeology exhibit explaining how dinosaur fossils were buried by the devil in order to deceive us about the true age of the Earth.

Plans are also underway for the Garden of Eden Biology Museum (to explain how Adam was created from dust, how Eve was formed from his rib, and why dinosaurs were all herbivores before The Fall) and a Conundrum Commons (various displays will reconcile the major Biblical contradictions and explain how three equals one, but will not discuss either unicorns or zombies).

Note: Biblical rules prohibit the serving of shrimp or lobster in any park restaurants. Also, poly/cotton blend t-shirts are not sold in the gift shops (which are sweatshop-friendly, because slavery is condoned by the Bible).

]]>http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/12/#002454
http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/12/#002454religionSat, 04 Dec 2010 10:08:52 -0500Bruce Schneier on cavity searchesSecurity guru Bruce Schneier wonders what's next after the TSA's full-body scanners. He writes that "PETN is the terrorist tool of the future. The problem is that no scanners or puffers can detect PETN; only swabs and dogs work:"

What the TSA hopes is that they will detect the bulge if someone is hiding a wad of it on their person. But they won't catch PETN hidden in a body cavity. That doesn't have to be as gross as you're imagining; you can hide PETN in your mouth. A terrorist can go through the scanners a dozen times with bits in his mouth each time, and assemble a bigger bomb on the other side. Or he can roll it thin enough to be part of a garment, and sneak it through that way. These tricks aren't new. In the days after the Underwear Bomber was stopped, a scanner manufacturer admitted that the machines might not have caught him.

"[I]f a group of well-planned and well-funded terrorist plotters makes it to the airport," continues Schneier, "the chance is pretty low that those blue-shirted crotch-groping water-bottle-confiscating TSA agents are going to catch them:"

The agents are trying to do a good job, but the deck is so stacked against them that their job is impossible. Airport security is the last line of defense, and it's not a very good one.

We have a job here, too, and it's to be indomitable in the face of terrorism. The goal of terrorism is to terrorize us: to make us afraid, and make our government do exactly what the TSA is doing. When we react out of fear, the terrorists succeed even when their plots fail. But if we carry on as before, the terrorists fail -- even when their plots succeed.

]]>http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/12/#002457
http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/12/#002457punditsFri, 03 Dec 2010 23:07:56 -0500McCain meets Monty PythonPaul Waldman discusses the fall of John McCain, writing that "Not too long ago, John McCain was one of the most admired people in Washington:"

He was held in esteem by both Republicans and Democrats. His legion of admirers in the press painted a picture of a heroic figure working to clean up the political system, fighting against overwhelming odds, pushed on by courage and principle. [...] And over the last few years, McCain has fallen further than most politicians ever imagine they could.

His fall isn't just because he gave us Sarah Palin, either. In the Congressional arena, there is also his moving-goalposts opposition to LGBT military service:

We don't know whether "don't ask, don't tell" will end this year or next, but we all know it will end, and gay people will be allowed to serve their country in the military, just like they do in almost every other Western nation. And when this debate is remembered, John McCain will be the symbol of fear and bigotry, abandoned by even his wife and daughter, the military's answer to George Wallace circa 1963, a bitter old man standing in the recruiting office door, shouting, "Discrimination now, discrimination tomorrow, discrimination forever!" That will be his legacy.

It's almost enough to make you feel sorry for him. Almost.

James Fallows writes about McCain's mystery, asking "how did he end up this way?"

I have been trying to think of a comparable senior public figure who, in the later stages of his or her career, narrowed rather than broadened his view of the world and his appeals to history's judgment. [...] John McCain seems intentionally to be shrinking his audience, his base, and his standing in history. It's unnecessary, and it is sad.

]]>http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/12/#002456
http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/12/#002456politiciansFri, 03 Dec 2010 22:24:30 -0500WikiLeaks on the runThere is plenty of chatter about the WikiLeaks DNS/webhosting debacles, but the best summation I've seen is from Nate Anderson at ars technica. Anderson mentions this tweet from EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow, which I suspect will go down in history:

"The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops."

Because if they can silence WikiLeaks, they can shut anyone up. Don't fight for Assange. Fight for yourself.

As Barlow's EFF compatriot John Gilmore once said, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

]]>http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/12/#002455
http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/12/#002455Fri, 03 Dec 2010 12:55:35 -0500ark parkThere are plans afoot to create an Ark Encounter theme park in Kentucky. In addition to "a full-size Ark, built to biblical dimensions," the park will contain a 14-acre walled city, a zoo and aviary, and a 100-foot-tall Tower of Babel. PZ Myers calls the ark park "a fancy Disneyland for ignoramuses," shows this drawing

and snarks:

Lookie there: the centerpiece will be a genuwine, life-sized, full scale copy of Noah's very own ark, all 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits of it, and they say it's gonna be built with materials and methods as close to possible as the ones in the Bible. Where they gettin' gopherwood? And are they really gonna build it with handsaws and mallets and wooden pegs? That's gotta be impressive, but it's gonna be tough to git'r done by 2014.

But wait a consarned minute: it ain't floatin'. And there's no talk of stockin' it with 8,000 pairs of animals, or however many they say there ought to be in there. I'll give 'em a pass on fillin' it with dinosaurs (well, maybe not...some say they're daid, but the folk at AiG say they're just hidin'), but I want elephants and hippos and giraffes and sheep and pigs and cassowaries and kangaroos and rhinoceroses and monkeys and squirrels and everythin' tucked in there, to give me the true and odoriferous varmint-rich Ark Experience.

ThinkProgress features a clip of an ark spokesperson answering the question "Will there be dinosaurs on the Ark?"

ANSWERS IN GENESIS OFFICIAL: [off-mike] Well you know the position of Answers in Genesis so you can probably answer that yourself. We'll have appropriate animals on the ark based on -- [on mike] I'm sure we'll have representative kinds of animals on the ark, to include dinosaurs.

It's gorgeous, but the price of €105 (including postage from the Netherlands) makes it a bit too spendy for an impulse purchase. Maybe I'll get one for my dream library...someday...

]]>http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/12/#002452
http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/12/#002452booksThu, 02 Dec 2010 19:44:36 -0500"No one cared that he was gay."In a post on reaction to the (impending?) repeal of DADT, Andrew Sullivan quoted a Special Forces member:

"We have a gay guy [in the unit]. He's big, he's mean, and he kills lots of bad guys. No one cared that he was gay."

NASA has discovered a completely new life form that doesn't share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth. [...] ...they have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today. Instead of using phosphorus, the bacteria uses arsenic. All life on Earth is made of six components: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. [...]

Discovered in the poisonous Mono Lake, California, this bacteria is made of arsenic, something that was thought to be completely impossible. [...] The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding beings in other planets that don't have to be like planet Earth.

"The definition of life has just expanded," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington. "As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it." [...]

The results of this study will inform ongoing research in many areas, including the study of Earth's evolution, organic chemistry, biogeochemical cycles, disease mitigation and Earth system research. These findings also will open up new frontiers in microbiology and other areas of research.

"The idea of alternative biochemistries for life is common in science fiction," said Carl Pilcher, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the agency's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "Until now a life form using arsenic as a building block was only theoretical, but now we know such life exists in Mono Lake."

]]>http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/12/#002436
http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/12/#002436Thu, 02 Dec 2010 10:52:50 -0500This is what happens......when you piss off the wrong people.

In the wake of the latest WikiLeaks document dump, an Interpol warrant was issued for founder Julian Assange yesterday. Kevin Poulsen wrote the story for Wired:

The investigation stems from separate encounters Assange had with two women during his August visit to Sweden, where he was applying for Swedish residency... [...] Assange has denied any wrongdoing, and hinted that the complaints are the result of a U.S. "smear campaign" targeting WikiLeaks -- leading some supporters of the group to publicly investigate the two women and their families.

[...]

In a statement earlier this month, Assange's British counsel said that his client repeatedly offered to cooperate with local investigators while he was in Sweden, and has offered to answer questions remotely from Britain since then. "All of these offers have been flatly refused by a prosecutor who is abusing her powers by insisting that he return to Sweden at his own expense to be subjected to another media circus that she will orchestrate," wrote attorney Mark Stephens. "Pursuing a warrant in this circumstance is entirely unnecessary and disproportionate."

In July of this year, Assange released the Afghan war documents, internal Pentagon documents that detail secret conversations and discussions of the war in Afghanistan. In August, he's accused of rape. By December, he's on what amounts to an international terror watch and presumably could be assassinated by a trigger-happy cop in whatever country he lands in.

All because he spoke the truth.

Like it or not, support him or not, this has to send a chill down your spine.

]]>http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/12/#002439
http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/12/#002439booksWed, 01 Dec 2010 12:10:02 -0500too much Miles?PopMatters' Will Layman asks "How Much Is Enough?" in the continued reissues of Miles Davis albums, noting that although "His 40-year body of work is one of the highlights of 20th century art...the record companies who control his legacy have shown seemingly little restraint in repackaging Davis:"

In 2010, they are not only selling a re-mastered box set of Bitches Brew, but they are re-releasing nearly all of Davis' recorded output for Columbia in a new trumpet case format and have even licensed a micro-brew in Davis' honor: Dogfish Head's Bitches Brew. [I discussed both the box set and the beer here.]

It's a marketing blitz that begs a question. Is there any reasonable limit on the re-selling of Miles Davis? How much can we really value Bitches Brew, or any cherished favorite, just because it comes in a new wrapper?

Haunted by the specter of Miles' post-retirement Warner albums being collected into a box set, Layman asks, "do we really want to hear outtakes from Doo-Bop or The Man With The Horn?"

Maybe it's just me, but I think that my Miles Davis Box Set days are behind me. I crave the long booklets and the whiff of the "Good ol' Days," sure, but I mainly crave just listening to the music. I don't think that these releases are damaging, but sometimes I fear that they just crowd out vital new music that should be heard.

But, to be sure, I still listen to Miles--boy, do I. This month, it's Bitches Brew I'm reinvestigating. Forty years on, it still sounds jarring and beautiful, thrilling and inevitable. May it ring like that forever.

Too much Miles is probably impossible, but too much marketing is an all-too-common problem.

]]>http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/11/#002437
http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/11/#002437musicTue, 30 Nov 2010 17:10:43 -0500Mansfield on liberalismThe Point magazine has an interesting interview with Harvey (Manliness) Mansfield. He candidly admits to the anti-intellectualism of the conservative base, but sweeps much else under the rug. For example, Mansfield falls back on the 40-year-old archetype of liberals as radicals with totalitarian inclinations when the truth is quite the opposite:

I don't think that conservatives believe that they can do away with liberals; they have enough realism to see that this will always be a temptation, and that makes them more tolerant as people, I think, and as citizens. Whereas liberals really think conservatism is based on prejudice and not principle--it's not respectable, and so, also not necessary to exist. They really have greater confidence that they can do away with their opponents, that permanent victories can be attained.

Liberals may be overconfident in the ideological realm, believing that our opponents' ideas are "not respectable," but it is conservatives who are trying to "do away with" liberals through violence. (See David Neiwert's The Eliminationists for details.) Mansfield later writes that he considers conservatism "a reaction to liberalism:"

It isn't a position that one takes up from the beginning but only when one is threatened by people who want to take away or harm things that deserve to be conserved. I think today that the principle task of conservatism is to save liberalism from the liberals. They misinterpret their own doctrine; pervert it and render it dangerous to freedom and peace alike.

Mansfield doesn't mention any concrete examples of these dangerous misinterpretations and perversions--but when the interview veers into same-sex marriage, he wonders "why would the gays, who pride themselves on their own unconventionality, want to submit to this bourgeois convention?" and continues:

It seems to go against the pride they take in being outlaws. [...] ...they should be asked why they desire to do something really contradictory to their way of life.

As if the "way of life" (the conservative intellectual way to avoid saying "lifestyle") of the LGBT community is all that different from that of straights. As if those gaffes weren't bad enough, Mansfield also praises the debunked stingy-liberal thesis of Who Really Cares? and speculates even further along the same lines.

I had been curious about his book The Spirit of Liberalism, but I'm wondering how worthwhile a read it would be given the number of errors in this interview.

]]>http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/11/#002451
http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/11/#002451lgbtMon, 29 Nov 2010 22:34:14 -0500Hitch on airport securityI joked about TSA body-cavity searches before, and Christopher Hitchens has a few words on the subject here. He notes a 2009 incident where "the lethal charge of PETN [plastic explosive] was concealed in the would-be assassin's rectum:"

In order for us to take them even remotely seriously, our Homeland Security officials should by now have had no alternative but to announce a series of random body-cavity searches some months ago.

]]>http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/11/#002450
http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/11/#002450punditsMon, 29 Nov 2010 14:04:57 -0500economic illiteracyFDL points out that economic illiteracy is a huge hurdle to overcome because "most Americans don't know a damn thing about economics" and the problem "is not limited to the public at large:"

Without some means to educate the public, the media, and our elected leaders about progressive economic alternatives to our current economic crisis, conservative politicians with their message discipline will continue to sway an electorate that is woefully ignorant on economic matters with simplistic and illogical soundbites passing as policy solutions.

Bruce Bartlett provides an example of this while explaining the idiocy of conservatives' "Starve the Beast" theory of budgetary prudence (discussing conservatism and fiscal responsibility in the same sentence is fairly ridiculous, but there you go):

A prime reason why we have a budget deficit problem in this country is because Republicans almost universally believe in a nonsensical idea called starve the beast (STB). By this theory, the one and only thing they need to do to be fiscally responsible is to cut taxes. [...] It ought to be obvious from the experience of the George W. Bush administration that cutting taxes has no effect whatsoever even on restraining spending, let alone actually bringing it down.

Insofar as the Bush administration was a test of STB, the evidence clearly shows not only that the theory doesn't work at all, but is in fact perverse. [...] Because of its obvious ridiculousness, one seldom hears conservatives say openly that tax cuts automatically reduce spending. But it still underpins the entire Republican budget strategy -- tax cuts never have to be paid for, no meaningful spending cuts are ever put forward, earmarks and foreign aid are said to be the primary sources of budget deficits, and similar absurdities.

Starve the beast is a crackpot theory, and its flip side that higher taxes invariably feed the beast is no better. They are just self-serving rationalizations for Republican budgetary irresponsibility.

]]>http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/11/#002447
http://www.cognitivedissident.org/2010/11/#002447politiciansSat, 27 Nov 2010 23:26:34 -0500Republicans' reverse elitismFollowing up on an earlier post on Sarah Palin, Aaron Astor also writes about Republicans' reverse elitism. As he defines it, "reverse elitism is often based in a sort of proud ignorance of what the elites hold to be superior. In other words, the reverse elitist listens to Keith Urban and Kenny Chesney in large part BECAUSE the music snobs reject them:"

Unlike anti-elitists who merely scoff at, mock, or defrock the elites, the reverse elitist actually posits the non-elite as "superior" to that of the elite - not, mind you, because the elites happened to have gotten this or that cultural phenomenon wrong, but because the elites are the elites. In other words, the reverse elitist turns cultural envy - jealousy even - to a rallying cry.

Astor sees Sarah Palin as "the classic Reverse Elitist" because "She takes all the exclusive pretensions of cultural elitists, reverses them, and holds her crowd to be the only people who should matter culturally and politically." Astor writes that in addition to being "comically uninformed on the basic issues of the day," Palin is "the classic American Idol candidate:"

It isn't just that she lacks experience. It's that she lacks anything approaching the sort of character that her own conservative and Republican backers supposedly cherish in a strong leader. She doesn't have "resolve." Her values are self-evidently skewed. She is utterly unserious on just about every policy discussion out there.